“One fine day, in a fit of euphoria, after he had picked up the telephone and taken an order for zero-coupon bonds that had brought him a $50,000 commission, just like that, this very phrase had bubbled up into his brain. On Wall Street he and a few others — how many? — three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? — had become precisely that … Masters of the Universe.”

“Bonfire of the Vanities,” Tom Wolfe

Donald Trump, a man about town in Manhattan, doubtless fancies himself a Master of the Universe. He is, however, no match for folks who have run rings around his ramshackle campaign in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Casper, Wyo.

They met to select, by settled rules comprehensible to all who can read, delegates to the Republican National Convention. They selected so many sympathetic to Ted Cruz that Trump has declared the system in both states, and wherever else the diligent are defeating the dilettante, to be “rigged, disgusting, dirty.” Actually, he is having the novel experience of competing in systems that are not rigged.

Voters can only surmise what Trump is hiding by refusing to release his tax returns, and can only guess how much he is exaggerating his wealth, or how much he has made from the money his father gave him. (To the question, “When you publicly state what you’re worth, what do you base that number on?” he replied: “I would say it’s my general attitude at the time that the question may be asked.”) Voters know, however, his repeated boasts that he has prospered in the New York City real estate business, a Petri dish of crony capitalism, by making lavish payments to political decision-makers:

“I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me.” And: “As a businessman and a very substantial donor to very important people, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.” And: “I’ve got to give to them, because when I want something, I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass.”